This past Thursday evening, I took my father (who was in town visiting) and my daughter, Abigail, to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I unabashedly love the Jurassic Park series in general and will often put it on to play while I’m doing laundry or any number of things where I can’t devote my attention to the screen fully. Not only is it background noise but it’s familiar and comforting.
Familiar and comforting? That seems out of place, yeah? Not for me. I’m not a sadist, but it’s one of my “go to movies” when I’m feeling crappy. Why?
My family and a few other families from my neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky got together to go watch the very first Jurassic Park on the big screen when I was a kid. It was the midnight showing at The Kentucky Theater and, to my recollection, I felt like a badass to be able to not only stay up until midnight but also watch a PG-13 dinosaur movie with my parents. Nowadays, my goal is to get to bed before 10pm; things change, obviously.
I loved dinosaurs and that’s never changed but at the time, like most kids of that era my love came from the Land Before Time. Jurassic Park was not, incidentally, anything like the journey of Little Foot and his friends to find The Great Valley. It was more like Little Foot being eaten by Sharp Tooth in the first act. Short movie that wouldn’t have gotten the green light. The movie not only scared me because it was pretty frightening on its own but also because I was an empathetic child to a fault. Whenever I saw movies, I worried about the fate of people who died or grievously injured in films and I felt horrible for the victim’s families. Since then, I can obviously distinguish fact from fiction and while I have a wild imagination, it’s not as irrationally wild as a small kid’s, thank God. The first movie, at that time, terrified me and it wasn’t until I saw it again as an 18 year old that it became one of my favorite film franchises. Until that point, I had reoccurring nightmares about being in a factory with raptors on the loose.
Throughout the years, the situations changed from what I looked like and whom I was with but the basic premise stayed the same. Now I’m a fan with T-Rex earrings. Go figure. I am not a fan for the visceral storytelling or the heady dialogue because they just plain don’t exist in these films. There are some cultish favorite lines but other than that, let’s not pretend it’s Shakespeare. I didn’t and don’t like this franchise because it’s high art but rather it’s just FUN. It gets your pulse going but isn’t like torture porn (i.e. Saw, House of a 1000 Corpses, Human Centipede, etc) where you could easily see some effed up people doing that stuff for kicks. You can separate yourself from the “realness” of it. I do like Silence of the Lambs but I consider that less horror and more suspense crime thriller, which I love.
As far as bringing kiddos, I should have realized when my child cried at The Good Dinosaur when the Dad dies that she might have issues with JW:FK. She also cries at any movie where a parent dies or a child is hurt, no matter how much I convince her it’s not real. But, in my defense, she liked Jurassic World and all the Jurassic Park movies. I think maybe seeing it on the small screen was easier on her than seeing it in the IMAX louder/bigger screen version we attended on Thursday evening. She got through it but she hid under her coat a lot. She nodded as very concerned about Blue’s welfare and the welfare of the child and grandfather, as well. Hell, I screamed more often than not.
It really, as with most movies at a PG-13 rating, depends on your parenting style and what your kid can handle. My kid both could and couldn’t (and will likely ask for a second viewing at home), but the little girl seated with her parents on my other side wasn’t scared at all throughout the whole thing – the only times she showed any reaction was when I screamed because that scared her more than what was depicted on screen. I don’t know…maybe I’m just a weenie. The little girl seated next to me told me (after the film when I laughingly apologized to her and her parents for my hysteria) that the movie wasn’t scary at all, giving me an incredulous look. I then came to the realization she’s probably a sociopath. Just kidding – I’m just jealous she’s braver than I am.
The content of the film, like I said, wasn’t high art but had many jumps and thrills. I screamed so much my throat was raw afterwards and my heart rate was nearing tachycardia. It was fun, purely and simply. Anyone looking for cinematic brilliance or deeper meaning out of a dinosaur flick, isn’t going to enjoy this at all. It doesn’t mean the film didn’t try to convey a deeper metaphorical and philosophical theme to the audiences – they just fairly suck at it. Basically? Go in with low expectations on a cerebral experience and high expectations on jumping a lot – maybe don’t drink or eat too much during, lest you want to spray your friends and family (or fellow moviegoers) with partially masticated food or partially drank liquid. On the whole, the story was pretty cut and dry and I want to see where they take it next.
The acting? Overall serviceable bordering on decent except for Chris Pratt, who was amazing. Then again, I’d probably pay to watch/listen to him read dinosaur romance (read: porn) books and those are deeply disturbing works of literature. He might be a bit type casted at this point as the smart ass, roguish hero with a heart of gold but hell, if the formula works, don’t try to reengineer it (like Dr. Henry Wu with Dino DNA every damn time). Rafe Spall as Mills, Benjamin Lockwood’s right hand man, also did a good job, incidentally – he was believable as a villain and not the hammy, over-acted version that Vincent D’Onofrio’s “Hoskins” brought to the screen. His motivations were clear as crystal and his requisite monologue to the heroes – let’s just say it was cut short in the coolest way possible. Jeff Goldblum didn’t need to be in this movie at all, honestly – but I guess they couldn’t get Sam Neill. If anything, it was a subtle as a train nod to the previous incarnations (apparently putting him on Zara’s book cover in the first Jurassic World movie wasn’t enough nodding so they went full head-banging mode).
Despite the Observer’s request that these films die (which is a pretty cynical viewpoint – they must hate fun) – these films will never die. They will never become extinct. They will always be around in perpetuity in the hearts and minds of many generations. Why? Do I even need to say the line at this point?
Go check out Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom now in theaters now.
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